Material Monster

Design checklist

What are the secrets of the successful websites? Why do some websites succeed while the others fail? More and more webmasters are asking themselves these questions. The answers are often more obvious than you may think.

Below are 10 tips for better, more successful web sites. This checklist of website design tips covers the primary points that you must include in your website design plan if you want a successful site. Beyond these basic design steps you can customize your checklist to reflect your unique situation. Remember, this is the most important part of your design project.

Top 10 Website Design Tips

Know your audience - Know who your market is and make certain that your site caters to their needs. It is critical that your site reflect the values of your potential customers.

Clearly identify the purpose of your website - Make certain your web site is focused on the goal, selling your product or service, conveying a message, etc. Keep your focus!

Make your website personal - The most professionally designed site won’t sell if your customers don’t believe in you.

Loading times - You have between 10 and 30 seconds to capture your potential customers attention. To minimize your load time, keep graphics small. Compress them where possible.

Use a site map or directory page - Make site navigation easy and intuitive. If your customer can not navigate your site to find what they want, they will go elsewhere.

Content - Good content sells product and ideas. Review your copy to insure it is delivering the intended message. Always double check your spelling and grammar.

Consistency - Make sure the site is consistent in look, feel and design. Keep colors and themes constant throughout the site.

Update and check all links - Make sure your site works! Check all of your websites links regularly. Dead links will hurt you in the search engines.

Start Simple - When you start to build your site and add information and products to it do it one page at a time, completing each page as much as possible as you go.

Optimize website - 85% of all web users find what they are looking for via the top search engines. Make sure that your page is designed to maximize your placement.

Think ahead

Implementing the ten steps above probably will not make your site as successful as one of the big websites overnight. But, if they are implemented correctly and integrated into an overall website design and/or marketing scheme, you should see a marked improvement in the sites traffic over time.

Gene DeFazzio is the author and webmaster of the Rocketface(R) Workshop. (http://www.rocketface.com/)

Are templates the shortcut of your dreams, or a complex design nightmare in the making? Find out what’s really required to effectively use most website templates.

Some new to the world of website hosting may find it easy to come across sites that offer the ultimate short cut to a “professional” website. Usually this shortcut will be a template. On screen the template will look great with its images, placeholder text, and unbranded graphics. The lure of the template for the novice user will be strong. Most template sites hit all the right buzzwords, “free”, “customizable”, “ready-to-use.” Unfortunately, to a novice, what they get when they take the bow off their new package may make little to no sense at all. This article will go over the common structure of templates and provide some insight into what skills and programs are needed before a template really can be considered “ready-to-use.”

Basics- Text Editing
At a very basic level, template users will need a way to edit the text content of a template. More likely than not the new template will be brimming with paragraphs beginning with “Lorem ipsum dolor” or similarly incoherent gibberish. Replacing that with your business copy can be achieved in a number of ways. Anything from a simple text editor like Notepad in Windows to more advanced packages like FrontPage or Dreamweaver can be used to edit the text. Using simple editors like Notepad will require at least a rudimentary knowledge of HTML, if only to know what to avoid changing in the template while adding text. Advanced editors usually provide a more “word processor-like” feel with graphical onscreen display that attempts to mimic the output on the final product. Your choice of design software is generally a personal one and beyond the scope of this article. It is preferable to have a basic familiarity with the chosen software before jumping into template editing, as template HTML can be complex and intimidating to the novice.

Graphics
Things only become more complicated beyond text. Your website design software may allow you to change text and move graphics and images around on the page, but it will not allow you to modify the content of the graphics or images. In most cases templates have graphical headers or graphics over images and logos that will contain similar placeholder text. This kind of “text” cannot be edited via Notepad or any other web design software because it is actually an image. Virtually every template package available today will come with large, editable graphic files in a format called “PSD.” These are “PhotoShop Documents”, and may only be fully edited by the industry standard Adobe Photoshop program. PhotoShop is the 500 pound gorilla of graphic design, it can do just about anything with the humble pixel. This kind of power comes with a high price tag, though. Coming in around $500-$600 street price, that’s just the first investment Photoshop requires. The second is the time and effort to learn the effective use of the program. Opening a template’s PSD file will likely result in a cascade of “layers” and “slices” even an experienced Photoshop hand would take time to digest.

Few other options for editing the provided PSD files exist. Only using the native program will allow full advantage to be taken of the file’s information. Some programs can open PSD files but cannot edit them. Some may be able to import the layers of a PSD file into their own native format for editing. A freeware alternative is “the GIMP”. GIMP stands for “GNU Image Manipulation Program”. The GIMP can import and read PSD files, though it may have trouble keeping text in an easily editable format. Other options are Macromedia Fireworks and PaintShop Pro. Though cheaper than Photoshop, Fireworks is still on the expensive side of the spectrum. Coming in around $100, PaintShop Pro is a cheaper alternative to Photoshop or Fireworks, but will also require some time and effort be devoted to learning its capabilities. Again, it’s important to point out these programs will not replace Photoshop as the ideal editor for the native PSD format. They will likely not support advanced features of the original PSD files and may not even be able to open some PSD files.

Flash
Similar to PSD files and Photoshop, templates that advertise Flash elements also require their own editor. It is beyond the scope of this article to discuss the wisdom of using Flash in the first place, but as a general rule of thumb, keep Flash use to minimum. Unless the template is for a complete Flash site, it will likely contain a “non-Flash” version of the template. Generally Flash is used for navigation and headers in templates, so if don’t wish to use the Flash elements, check to see if there is a “non-Flash” version that uses gif/jpeg graphics instead. Otherwise a Flash editor will be required as well as some more time and effort to learn the editor and Flash. Ironically, templates can be a useful learning tool for Flash, since seeing how they are laid out and scripted can provide an understanding of how the animations work.

SEO/Structure
A final note on templates in general. Those willing to buy the software, take the time to learn it, and use a template should be aware that many templates are not “well coded.” For the most part this may not effect or even matter to the template buyer. They will have a website and it will “work”. Anyone who is also attempting to optimize their site for search engine placement, or who wants to make their site more efficient and use less code, should pay attention to the structure of the HTML files provided in the template. Many, though by no means all, templates, use a “tables” based layout that could be improved upon to make it more code efficient and make search engine optimization easier.

Conclusions
Templates are “short cuts”, but a short cut the novice user may not wish to take. Most templates require a particular, and generally expensive, set of tools to fully customize. Prospective template shoppers may want to consider hiring an outside design firm to actually do the work on their selected website template. Some designers recommend this method, as it provides a basic short-cut in terms of rudimentary layout and design that can be invaluable. Pay attention to the template site’s terms of service, though, as many will require the end user directly purchase the template and deliver it to the designer themselves in lieu of the designers making the purchase.

Mr. Lester has served for 4 years as the webmaster for ApolloHosting.com and previously worked in the IT industry an additional 5 years, acquiring knowledge of hosting, design, and search engine optimization. Apollo Hosting provides website hosting, ecommerce hosting, vps hosting, and web design services to a wide range of customers. Established in 1999, Apollo prides itself on the highest levels of customer support.

Let me explain. “Something is better than nothing.” That’s a statement I hear often from small business owners when they talk about websites. It’s simply not true.

Here are some questions to consider before you jump in and hand over your hard-earned cash to a graphic designer, web designer or copywriter, just “to have a presence on the web.”

1. Do you have the resources to hire a competent graphic designer, web-designer and copywriter? Most people forget to factor in the copywriter! As well as a having a beautiful design, your content must be well presented. In the long run it pays off to hire qualified professionals.

2. How will you drive traffic to your site? A site is no use to you unless people visit it. In the good old days, there just weren’t that many sites and it was exciting to visit new ones. These days people have tons of choices and it takes effort and know-how to persuade them to come and hang out at your place on the web.

3. Critical for a new business: Is your business defined enough to be able to put specific content on your site? Can you articulate convincing answers to these questions: “What exactly do I do?” or “Why should you buy my product or service?” or “Who is my target market?” If not, you may not be ready for a website. If you’re vague about what you do, the content of your site will be vague and vague doesn’t sell.

4. Do you know your marketing objectives for the site? This will determine how the site is structured, and how the information flows through it in order to fulfill those objectives.

5. How will you maintain it and keep it updated? You’re responsible for the site. Visitors who come and find out-of-date information, badly written content or broken links will not give you the benefit of the doubt. They’re gone. On to the next site. You’ve lost them and chances are they’ll never come back.

As a small business owner myself, I know what it’s like to have too little time and to operate on a micro- budget. None of us can afford to waste time and money on something that doesn’t work.

I look at a lot of websites and the majority of them (yes! the majority of them) make me cringe for the person who’s paid money for a site that just doesn’t present them well. It’s better to have no website than one that irritates or confuses your visitors, or damages your credibility. It’s OK to wait a while until you’ve done everything in your power to make sure you’re prepared for this important step.

Copyright 2006 Maggie Dennison

Maggie Dennison is a Marketing Consultant and Writer. She is the author of “11 Steps To Marketing Materials That Get You Clients NOW!” Maggie holds a Master’s Degree in Applied Psychology, and is fascinated with what triggers people to do the things they do. And that’s exactly what marketing materials are all about. Pick up a free report at her website http://www.MyMarketingMessage.com/

Go to any internet marketing forum you want these days and
one of the topics is sure to be whether or not there is a
“sandbox” at Google where new sites are forced to come and
play for 3-6 months before joining the ranks of ranked and
searched results. On the surface it would appear that this
is so. New sites are typically taking a long time to get
indexed and even longer to show up in the search results.
So hence, the sandbox theory. Let’s examine some possible
reasons and more importantly, our reaction to it.

The most obvious possibility, (since no one outside of
Google really knows) is that because of the proliferation
of spam on the engines, Google is checking all the links to
these new sites. Sometimes a new site will appear sporting
thousands of backlinks, and this takes some time to check,
even given a rolling schedule of indexing by that pesky
spider! Google it seems is serious about link farms, and
anything that smacks of that may take some time to get
indexed. But then, so will most other sites. It is a very
large index, (some say nearing capacity, though I doubt
that will turn out to be true) and it is a gargantuan task
to keep it current and free of extraneous (read poor)
search results. There are other ideas out there, and
conspiracy theories abound, one being that it is an evil
plot to force newer sites in search of traffic to resort to
paying for Google Adwords. Uh-huh. A particularly amusing
thread is currently taking place at the High Rankings
forum, a must-read for all conspiracy theorists!

Since we don’t know, can’t know, will not know for sure
until the Google Gods unlock the keys to the kingdom and
enlighten us; it only makes sense to this webmaster to get
on with life. I’ve got new sites waiting, as do many. We
all languish at PR0 until (or if) there’s another update.
Some sites get picked up quicker than others, and to some
extent that is a measure of SEO. However just get over it!
Since there’s nothing concrete we can do except build great
content sites with lots of relevant links (legitimate) why
worry about any sandbox?!? Don’t get your knickers in a
knot! Write more content, articles, and get more sites to
link to you because of the worth of your site. There are
other sources of traffic, go get them! Do the right
thing for your business. Spend time on it, not worrying
about this.

Many of the leading voices in SEO agree that there may
indeed be a “sandbox”, and if there is, that may not
necessarily be a bad thing. You don’t want some farmer
(link) ranking ahead of your carefully crafted content
site, do you? Of course not! One thing is sure: if there is
a sandbox, it belongs to Google and if you want to play,
follow the rules and don’t cry! Pay or play!

Keith Thompson is the Webmaster at Internet Marketing Here & Now! a site devoted to bringing you the latest and best in website promotion.